Am I loved?
by BrokenKestral
Summary: Susan struggles to remember Aslan loves her; she struggles with what love is.
1. Am I loved?

For all those who have been hurt enough they wonder if they are loved, for those deep enough in the valley they take His love on faith, for those who cry when they remember they're loved because it's hard to believe but essential to live—may this story be a blessing.

Disclaimer: A love such as this could never be mine to own; nor could all the stories it has born.

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_Do You love me?_

I asked it first when we were sent away; when Father had already left (the halls echoed emptily without his laughing voice, like Peter's without the weight), when Mum had to be left behind, when the city had places with craters instead of buildings and I dreamed we'd come home and find Mum wasn't there anymore. And I tried to comfort a brother who didn't want it, a boy trying to be a man who didn't want gentleness, and a sister who now jumped at every sound. In the ruins of world I asked a God who might exist,

_With everything like this—do You love me?_

And we were welcomed to a mansion with a strange old man and his strict servants, and there I watched and heard my youngest sister start to turn mad (oh, the fears Peter and I had), and saw my younger brother make it worse, and I told the crumbling universe,

_You must not love me._

But Lucy wasn't mad. With all my siblings I walked into a wood in the middle of a wardrobe, and found a war we could fight, however reluctantly, and a Lion whose very name breathed music.

_Aslan_.

His very name held the promise of good, and good is bound up with love.  
And I asked, quietly, for fear of upsetting the hope inside me, even as I feared for a brother with a White Witch,

_Is it possible - could You love me?_

And I met Him. And I walked with Him, one dark, aweful night, as He grieved. I heard His moans, His loneliness, His request to bury my hands in His mane so He wouldn't feel alone. And all I could think, behind the questions, was,

_I love You_.

The night got worse, evil closer, and I crouched while shielding my sister, hiding ourselves at His command. And worse and worse, they shaved Him, they mocked Him, _they tied and muzzled Him_, and then finally the Witch stabbed Him, and I could not watch.

_All I loved most, all I wanted to love me, lost_.

Only it wasn't lost. The night lasted for cold, numbing hours, but dawn came, and He rose.  
He **rose**.

_And when He fought, love won. And Love crowned me._

He won my brother's life, my kingdom's freedom, and a home where nothing was crumbling. The dark times in our reign were never as dark as that one night, and I remembered and believed.

_You love me. I believe._

I wore Love's own crown, and I was loved.  
Then we were sent back. And a year passed, a year when I had the love of my family, but not the crown Love had given me, and my memory of it faded. Sometimes when the night wouldn't let me sleep, I couldn't avoid the question,

_You love me, don't you? You haven't forgotten?_

I told myself my family would have to be enough. Their love would have to be enough.  
But we were called back, and I found in my hand, by the well, a little golden chessman. And I remembered, a castle, a kingdom, _a crown_, given by the hand of Love Himself, when His touch rested upon us and Love never lost.

_But You lost us. You let us go. Surely You know why it's hard to trust You? Why I'm so afraid?_

He told me I'd listened to fears. And He breathed on me and placed me at His side. I rode Love's back to set Narnia free once again.

_This, this is what it is to live by Love, and Love's strength_. _I must be loved. I am with Him._

But He sent us away, Peter and I. And this time we could not come back. This time there was no reminder. This time we didn't have hope, only memories. There was only England, where Love was invisible and we didn't know His name.

_Why does remembering Your love hurt? This can't be love._

I argued with Him. My siblings never told that part, for they didn't know it. I told Him I could bear the loss of Narnia, the loss of the crown, the loss of a place where air itself made me a queen. But I could not lose Him; I could not lose the way He loved me. I could not face a life where everything was hard, where I was wounded, and there was no joy, and He was not there to make it worth it. I told Him,

_You do not love me, and I __**will**__ be loved_.

And I was. Boys and girls (we were not men and woman, not yet) worshipped at my feet, and I tried to satisfy myself with their love.  
It was as empty as my denial of Narnia.  
And it was not enough, when a night almost as dark as Aslan's death came.  
When my siblings, my parents, even my once-obnoxious cousin died. And this time there would be no dawn. No resurrection.

_You hate me. Only hate would drive the wound this deep.  
__With everyone else gone, I cannot hate You too._

Time passed. Two years.  
Two years isn't enough to heal a wound like that. It only stops the bleeding. The pain lessens but doesn't leave. And at the end of that time, I found I couldn't believe He loved me. Maybe He never had.

_If You did, I wouldn't be dying.  
__If You did, it wouldn't be this hard_.

But Love is relentless. Flowers in my garden, music when my heart gives way, the touch of a friend on the hardest days (but maybe not the nights), memories to hold on to.  
Not enough to live. But enough not to die.

_The pastor said that You are both Love and Life. Do You love me?_

It did not stop.

_After all I have done, after how far I have gone, could You love me?_

And time does teach that life goes on. I am a different person, I cannot go back to the past, but there may be something that makes the future worth the graves in the cemetery. Maybe. A frail hope, frailer than the whispered hope of a girl leaving the bombs of London. It whispers,

_After all You have done to me, could You love me? After all I have done to You, could You love me?_

"that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge"(1).

_I remember this love. I remember Love, though I do not understand. _

It became the answer to prayers, the presence on a walk, the answer in a Bible, the sharing of burdens. A church making a God known by their love. A love that was so very familiar.

_I still do not understand. But I believe. I am loved._

He had another name. He had the same story, written out and lived and died for more than just Edmund. And He had faced that aweful night all alone.

_I can no longer hear Your voice, deep enough to shake the earth and strong enough to break and remake my heart, whispering my name. I can no longer see Your eyes, with their unbearable love and reassuring truth, seeing me. I can no longer feel the touch of You. But I believe. I believe You love me.  
__I believe that one day I will hear You say my name again, and that one word will have a love worth all the darkest nights. For I have been rooted and grounded in love. And the name of Love is Christ, who laid down His life for His beloved. _

_For me._

_And for you. You are loved._

OOOOO

(1) Ephesians 3:17b-19a


	2. I love you

**A/N: I wasn't intending on writing a second chapter - and I know I should get to work on **_**A Turtle's Tale**_** \- but I had this idea last night, and I wanted to see if I could write something profound out of it. I'd like to be able to do that now.**

**Disclaimer: We love because He first loved us, and I tell this tale because someone else wrote it first; nothing in it is mine.**

OOOOO

Mum was the first to speak those three words where I could hear them. I was not an hour old when she held me in her arms, staring down with an exhausted smile, and said, _I love you._

I didn't speak yet. I barely knew how to eat. I didn't understand those sounds.

But Mum did. They were a promise.

_I'll care for you. I'll feed you and rock you through the nights you wake me, and I'll watch you grow. I'll give you everything I have and everything I am._

_I love you._

* * *

I grew up saying those three words, hearing them. It hurt when Edmund stopped saying them, and when Peter grew too old to say them outright. But Peter kept the promise in them. Edmund didn't, but I said them to him anyway. I still meant the promise in them.

But then I found that those words - they're not always a promise. Sometimes they're something else.

I was standing in the foyer. All of us, my siblings, my mother, my father, and myself, were crowded into the small room, silent and unhappy. Father was closest to the door. A battered suitcase leaned against the wall right behind him, packed with everything Mother thought he might need; each item fulfilling the promise of _I love you_. Would he be able to say it when he wasn't here anymore - after this? How could he make that promise when he was far away?

He shrugged on his coat, looked at the four of us, starting with Peter and going down the line as he hugged us. "Be good for your Mother," he reminded us, his hand still on Lucy's shoulder. Then he looked at her, reached out for her, and held her. His arms were strong, and I didn't think she could have moved out of them if she'd wanted to. He whispered it, right in her ear; I was closest and I barely heard it. _I love you_.

Then he turned and left. It was the only goodbye he said.

_I love you_ wasn't a promise anymore.

_I love you_ meant_ goodbye._

_I love you too Father._

* * *

Mrs. Macready was very proper. Her strict voice was correct in each address. If she ever spoke the words _I love you_, it wouldn't be to children. And the way she took care of us didn't say _I love you_ but _I am doing what I should_. It was a cold kind of feeling.

The Professor was neither very proper nor always correct, but something about the kindness he showed us made me think _I love you_ would come easily from him. Given a little time. Though it'd be said in an odd tone and in an odd way, it would still be that promise I wanted it to be. It would be warm.

A little time passed, and I forgot about him maybe giving us that promise. I had too many other things to think about, the people I'd given the promise to. Only I didn't keep it very well. I tried too hard to give it as Mum had, to watch their bedtimes and make sure they ate, and none of them liked it. But it was the only way I knew how to say _I love you._

_I love you._

_Go eat dinner. _

_Get some rest. It's time for bed._

_Please let me take care of you. Because someone should._

_I want to see you're taken care of._

* * *

We were called out of our world. We walked away from a wardrobe where we hid because we weren't wanted into a world at war where they'd been waiting for us for a hundred years. And then we met _Him_. _Aslan_.

We couldn't look at Him without loving Him. And it was the most wondrous thing in the world, when He looked back at us and loved us too. If He'd said the words aloud, they would have shaken all of Narnia and the sea and the islands on it with the promise of it.

_I love you._

_I am Love. Come and know me, and you will know Love itself._

* * *

Love itself died.

The White Witch had walked into our camp to meet with Aslan. She hadn't even _looked_ at my brother when she claimed him. She was a hundred years colder than Mrs. Macready, and cruel because she could be, and she liked it. I swore I would never be her, never be that cold and ruthless.

And she wanted Edmund.

_I love you, I love you, I love you Edmund_. But all my love could do nothing.

Aslan was there too. He settled with the Witch. That night Lucy and I learned what the cost had been, what He meant by _I love you._

He laid down His life for my brother.

There was no greater _I love you_ than this.

And there was no life for us without it.

* * *

His _I love you_ would have shaken more than Narnia and the sea and sky. It shook death itself. He came back to us, came back and breathed on us, He _played_ with us. He caught us, tossed us, scrambled after us, _laughed with us_. His laughter and His roar - a thousand _I am here_ crashing over us.

He could not be near us and not love us. He had made us His.

_I love you_ meant life itself.

* * *

Life crowned us. I said _I love you_ to a thousand Narnians and more, together with my siblings. Lucy gave love with laughter and light mixed in, Peter by sword and shield and courage, Edmund by justice and mercy and wisdom. I gave it by the care I'd always heard in those three words. I gave beauty and care and gentleness. I gave things that made life warm and good.

I said it to a thousand beings, and Love Himself sustained me to keep saying it. To keep living it. I was a Queen crowned by Love and giving it out. I saw it given out and taken in everywhere I looked, in a thousand different ways.

_I love you._

Love multiplied.

* * *

_I would have permission to court you. Your face haunts my nights and I get no sleep; my eyes are dark because of your beauty. Would you hear my words, O Jewel of Narnia?_

There were so many other things he said. When I walked in the gardens, he walked beside me; when I stooped to serve, he stood and watched me. He gave me all his time, from when we woke and ate till the nights he bowed and bid the four of us farewell. I had all of his attention; I was everything to him.

Surely this was another, deeper way to say _I love you_. Surely when he bowed and spoke of winning the tournament if he could for the sake of my name, surely he meant it?

He was a prince, Rabadash, eldest son of the Tisroc (who would never live forever). His hand would mean our greatest alliance; perhaps his hand would mean great happiness for me as well.

Meek in conduct, courteous in conversation, fierce on horseback, and he spent his days giving me all. It was a heady way to be told _I love you_. When he asked me to come with him to his city, I did not say no.

But in his city he showed another face. Meekness disappeared, and his pressed me as if I were the horse he rode to a tournament, seeking to bend me to his will. This was not happiness; nor would this lead to any good for Narnia, for he heard none of my words when I said _no_.

Then my brother spoke with me, and told me Rabadash had decided I would be his wife, or his slave, which was worse.* Yet the prince would still have said he loved me.

And I shuddered, for his _I love you_ meant _you're __mine_.

* * *

I fled that _love_. I fled it, back to the love that multiplied in our Golden Age, back to the arms of my brother and sister who went to war for me, back to the older brother who came back to me. I went back to the love of those whose love gave instead of possessed.

Back to the love of Aslan, who possessed our hearts but gave us our freedom.

Back, and there I loved and lived, and it was all I could ask for.

Until the day we left.

* * *

I could not hear _I love you_ well during that year, the one between our times in Narnia. Father came back, and his love no longer meant _goodbye_. He said _I love you, _and once again it meant a promise. A promise that he'd care for us, and we didn't have to be afraid. He said sometimes, "Perfect love drives out fear_._"** That's what he meant to teach us. But I didn't learn that; I learned the reverse, that fear can drive out love. And I listened to fear.***

Then He called us back to Narnia. Love Himself stood before me, and I trembled, not knowing what to say. What could I say to the one I'd driven away? He breathed on me and made me braver; and I came to know love once again.

But He sent us away. He sent us from the presence of Love. And I came back with the knowledge that sometimes, _I love you_ means not only _goodbye_, but also _I long for you and cannot have you. _

_I love you._

_I don't know how to love you when you aren't here_.

* * *

Peter and I both went to those who'd already learned that lesson. Aslan had left; but He'd given us those who went before us. And in Aunt Polly's and Professor Kirke's words we heard Aslan's love again. We heard His wisdom.

And they loved us. The Professor first; he knew us first, and it came easily to him, as I thought it would. _I love you_. Not out loud, you know. It wouldn't have been appropriate. We knew it anyway. Because he _listened_. And then, having _heard_, he spoke. What he said was always truth, and it could be gentle even at its most piercing. He spoke the truth because he loved us, and he listened for the same reason.

_I love you._

_I am akin to you, and older, and will give you all Aslan has given me. I will listen to you; then listen to me._

_Come and be welcome._

_This is love._

* * *

Edmund and Lucy went back. With _Eustace_. I should have stood in wonder at Aslan saying _I love you_ to such a person; but I grew cynical instead. Love offered to everyone couldn't mean very much, could it? Yet Aslan called _Eustace_ back and not us. Not me.

It wasn't right.

It wasn't _love_.

A few years passed. I decided to find love in this world, in England and America, if I couldn't have it in Narnia.

I looked for love.

* * *

I found adoration. I listened to them as they welcomed me, as they spent time with me, and pushed to the back of my mind the way Rabadash had done the same. They didn't want to possess me. They just wanted a taste of my glory. They loved me for it.

And if my siblings loved me differently, well, they hadn't really grown up yet. This was the way adults loved, this acceptance, this equal trade of compliments (if one was given, one _must_ be returned), of invitation for invitation. Love was all a trade. I looked good on his arm; he made me look better than I would have alone. We laughed and it was fun.

It was what I wanted. It was love. It _was_. Friendship. Love. (I ignored memories of other friendships; of a land that made me welcome; of a faun who gave me authority and friendship at the same time, and never made it a trade; of a general who gave safety and even his life, and left it to Aslan to ask me for what I should give. They weren't real. That love was fantasy.)

And my siblings didn't understand what love was. I tried saying it to them still, trying to let them understand it meant something else. _I love you_ meant...meant - oh, they knew what it meant. I cared about them and we had a history together, a childhood together, but there wasn't room for them much _now_. Things had changed. _I love you_ meant _Christmas_ and _Easter_ and dinners at home when I could spare the time. I knew they wanted me there more, but I grew up, and _I love you_ meant something different now. A promise that they still mattered, I suppose.

If only I had known how much.

_I love you_ had become something I said in passing.

* * *

I'd learned while young that _I love you_ can mean _goodbye_. I couldn't say it. I couldn't. _Goodbye_ was too final. I stood at their graves and said _I love you _instead.

_I love you._

_I would give anything to speak with you again._

_I would give anything I had, my own life, to hear you say it back. _

_I remember that love is a thing that multiplies when traded. But now it's stopped short by a grave._

_I love you_ just means _it hurts._

_It hurts enough I wish life were death. That's where love has gone. I don't want life without it._

* * *

Adoration wasn't love. Stripped of love, adoration wasn't enough to live on. And I thought my own life was finished.

But Love Himself lived in our world. Little by little, He showed Himself to me.

I would have turned away if He had come all at once.

But a little bit, another little moment, another small gift, He showed Himself to me. And I turned towards Life without knowing Him.

He told me His story. He told me He'd died for loving us. For loving me. That He laid aside His glory (my own was gone now, but His He gave up freely), that He lived a hard, obedient life (my own was hard, but I had long been disobedient), and that He died the cruelest death.

All to say _I love you_. All so we would hear Him, and we could say it back. All to erase the barrier I knew so well, death between us. He died to become our life, and life eternal.

Maybe I believed.

Maybe I needed to, with my siblings and parents on the other side of that barrier.

And maybe it was true. As true as Narnia had been.

Maybe Love Himself met me when all other loves had ceased, and Love Himself gave me life.

And I'm waiting for the day I hear _I love you_ from my family again. For the day I'll see Him face to face again, and for the day I'll hear His voice say the same.

_I love you._

OOOOO

*Quoted from _The Horse and His Boy_.

** I John 4:18

***Quoted from _Prince Caspian_

**A/N: I need to start another story to alternate with **_**A Turtle's Tale**_**, and I was wondering, are people more interested in:  
****1\. A story where Lucy is kidnapped and Aslan tells her to help her kidnapper,  
****2\. A story where Peter remembers times he rescued his siblings, but he's currently in trouble, or  
****3\. A story from Tumnus's perspective in LWW?**


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